by King, R. L.
Swaying back and forth, he grabbed onto a street sign for balance and glanced up at white letters that swam across it: Foothill. He was on Foothill Road. Assuming he was facing the right direction, he should be able to keep going for another quarter mile or so and he’d be close to Ojai Avenue, the town’s main drag. His motel was there, maybe another mile up the road. But once he got to Ojai Avenue, he was home free.
First he’d have to get walking, though.
He rolled his head back and stared up into the black carpet of stars peeking through the canopy of ancient oak trees, one hand clutching the street sign to keep him from falling over backward. You could actually see the stars here, since there weren’t too many streetlights and most of the houses, set far back from the street, were dark by now. He almost never got up to Ojai back when he’d lived down here; back then, he and his friends considered it nothing but a boring little bedroom town full of rich people, old hippies who hadn’t quite figured out the Sixties were long gone, and artsy-fartsy weirdos. Still, a little slow-down and back-to-nature wasn’t altogether horrible after the faster pace of the Bay Area. He’d go crazy if he had to stay here long, but a few days wouldn’t be so bad.
Come on, dummy. You can gawk at the stars all night, but it’s not gonna get you back to the motel any faster.
He pushed himself off the sign so hard he almost fell over, lurched back to a mostly standing position, and started off in the direction of Ojai Avenue again. It couldn’t be much farther, right?
Then he spotted the shadowy figure up ahead.
He stopped, blinking, trying to decide whether what he was seeing was really there, or if it was just another illusion brought on by too much booze. But no, it sure looked real: a tall, slim form climbing over the low wall separating the packed-dirt sidewalk from a leafy, tree-filled vacant lot.
“Hey,” Jason called amiably, waving a hand. He wondered if the figure was drunk too. Maybe it had climbed over the wall to puke discreetly in the leaves, and was now coming back to the road to do exactly what he himself was doing: trying to walk back to wherever it was staying.
The figure stopped at the sound of his voice and stood in the middle of the path, staring at him. It didn’t return his greeting. Jason frowned, his brain trying to get itself around whatever odd cues this person—he couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman—was putting out.
Cautiously, he moved closer. “Hey,” he said again. “Nice night, huh?” His voice sounded very slurred, and he almost laughed.
The figure tilted its head to one side. “Nice...night,” it agreed. Its voice was creaky and oddly inflected, as if it were unfamiliar with using it. It sort of sounded like a guy, but it was still impossible to be certain.
“You sound drunker than I am,” Jason observed. “You—”
He got a look at the figure’s eyes.
He shouldn’t have been able to do that, since there were no streetlights in the vicinity and very little light from the moon. But there they were anyway—
—and they were glowing.
I have got to be plastered. Jason shook his head a couple of times, figuring it would drive off the weird vision and make the world make sense again.
But no, the figure’s eyes still glowed faintly, in a most disquieting shade of red-orange.
“What the hell—?” he began, but the figure merely turned and disappeared back over the wall. Jason could hear it rustling through the leaves.
He stood there for a few more moments, listening to the sound of the stranger recede until it was gone, wondering if he’d really heard or seen it at all. That had been fucking freaky, was what that had been.
Naturally, the first thought that followed “fucking freaky” was I gotta tell Al about this.
Somehow (he’d never be quite sure how, but God had a reputation for looking out for drunken idiots), Jason made it back to his motel. It was right on Ojai Avenue, and in an even better stroke of good fortune, all the rooms were on the ground floor. God might look out for drunks, but even he had limits, and Jason suspected stairs were probably among them.
He fumbled his key into the lock and stumbled into the room. Blearily, he noticed the digital clock on the nightstand read 2:57.
That was way too early to call Al, who would flay him alive if he called at three in the morning. And he could do it, too. Flaying was something Alastair Stone was really good at. The thought made him giggle, for no apparent reason.
“Okay, then,” he muttered. “Lemme just sleep for a while. Need to sleep anyway. I’ll call him in the morning.”
Yeah, that was a good idea. Just get some nice sleep, and call in the morning.
That was the best idea he’d had all night.
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Books By R. L. King
The Alastair Stone Chronicles
Stone and a Hard Place
The Forgotten
The Threshold
The Source
Shadows and Stone (novella)
Shadowrun (published by Catalyst Game Labs)
Borrowed Time
Wolf and Buffalo (novella)
About The Author
When not doing her best to make life difficult for her characters, R. L. King is a software technical writer for a large Silicon Valley database company. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging out with her very understanding spouse and her small herd of cats, watching way too much Doctor Who, and attending conventions when she can. She is an Active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Horror Writers’ Association, and the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.
You can find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AlastairStoneChronicles and on Twitter at @Dragonwriter11. Her blog is at www.rlkingwriting.com.